5th Year Adventures, Short Story 4, Hometown Heartbreak
by PTMaskell
Summary: Ambushed in his home town, young monsieur Couillard stares down the barrel of the end of his days as a wizard.


It was strange how quickly weeks went by when your mind is split between living life, and fleeing to save it. Not long after arriving for my O.W.L. year

in Hogwarts I found myself outside the castle after lights out. An event so common in my case it was literally how I expected every night to go. Most

every night my wanderings took me through the Forbidden Forest, down toward Black Lake, or just sitting in Professor Hagrids hut mindlessly reading a

book whilst eating rock cakes, and using Fang as a footstool.

For some reason, somehow I'd ended up atop Ravenclaw Tower the final night of the new moon earlier this month. A roof with no nearby windows,

nor a staircase magically concealed or otherwise. The schoolbook I'd been enraptured with had become so difficult to read in the moonless nights dark it

sparked my awareness of my situation, and bewildering location.

I was ready to use a Portkey back to my personal laboratory, when a wand fell from the sky right before my eyes.

With no bearer following it.

Upon returning to my lab I'd set about examining it. Using Prior Incantato revealed a shrouded figure which slowly showed itself to be the Headmistress,

Minerva McGonagall. No sooner had the mist from the tip of the Fir and Dragon Heartstring wand vanished when an invisible attacker exploded the desk

the wand rested upon.

I only just managed to defend myself from the blast.

Not five minutes later my makeshift lab from an old classroom was empty. All traces of me packed tightly into my Undetectable Expansion

Charmed side-satchel. Using a pathway I'd devised from the bricks behind the Leaky Cauldron that led into Daigon Alley, I'd long-since charmed the

wall of my lab to be a doorway to the roost of one of my oldest friends, an Antipodean Opaleye Dragon's in a nearby mountain.

Even Homenum Revelio hadn't been able to detect anyone before my departure, and yet I felt the vaguest of tingles of danger as I stepped through

the wall onto the mountain before it snapped shut behind me.

The same feeling of danger had followed me two days later to the Modesty Rabnott's Snidget Reservation. While I could see no one, they were clearly

there, and following me despite riding a dragon across Europe.

Which brought me back home, to Normandy, France.

I hadn't come back to my hometown seeking parental guidance, or even shelter. They were Sans Magie, and could no way comprehend my problems. I

think I came here just to say goodbye to it one last time.

And considering the wand whose barrel I was staring down, up into a sleeve that vanished where an arm and robe should be, I should probably have

just slept in the air instead of the off-season abandoned Mane'ge Enfants.

"What do you know," came a horribly distorted voice, "about the wand."

I fingered my wand, hidden in my left sleeve. If I could just get a slight grip on it without them noticing, I might be able to cast a wild spell and get

myself free.

The wand in front of my face made a sudden dip to the right, back up to a half-circle, then slashed downward, "Silencio!" came the garbled voice.

And immediately I felt my vocal cords relax away from my adenoid cartilage in my pharynx. Try as I might, it wouldn't tighten back up, and could not

pronounce a spell to cause any kind of distraction. Not effectively, anyway.

My attacker backed away from me, that is to say, they stood up while keeping their aim. They found my side-satchel on the stacked hay bale next to

where I'd slept. My whole life, and all my work was in that bag.

From thin air another arm, shrouded in a loose-fitting black garment reached into the satchel and slowly started stacking bricks on the bale until every

last one was out.

The bricks were portkeys I'd personally enchanted to bring me back to various locations within Hogwarts: my Lab, The Great Hall, the Hospital Wing,

directly to Madam Pompfrey if necessary. I'd used them in plain view of fellow students, Professors, and even the squib janitor, Argus Filch enough times

for my attacker to be anyone at all who could have seen me use them, or been told about them. They were my go-to for certain escape, and the dread

of losing my most direct passage back to my real home, Hogwarts, was welling up inside me. The uncertainty I'd been feeling about returning to

complete my school year was beginning to feel more certain.

The air shimmered around this witch or wizard. This invisibility of theirs, it was obvious that it was no spell, but I'd never seen that level of masterful

disguising and bending of light from ordinary Invisibility Cloaks.

I had to act before this assailant destroyed my way home. Even if I couldn't cast using my voice, even a weakened spell could save my life's work.

My wand had just barely left my sleeve, before it even passed to my wand hand I saw their red wand slash downward and twirl into a spiral in a

perfectly practiced Disarming Spell I barely registered it before they could say, "Expelliarmus!"

My treasured Aspen and Dragon-Heartstring wand, tipped with the tooth of a werewolf who attacked me from within the Portcullis of the Slytherin

Dormitory the night of my sorting, fused with the core, and mended by Ollivander with Chimera Mane hair shot through the air and into the hand of my

stalker.

The loss had no time to register in my mind, before the shrouded wizards wand was pointed at my portkeys.

"BOMBARDA!" shouted the cloaked figure. A small, but loud explosion destroyed all my bricks.

And woke up my dragon.

Fire shot across the path between myself and my enemy in such ferocity I was worried the entire Mene'ge would erupt around me before I could get

clear of the flames. My Antipodean Opaleye companion shot by, reaching out briefly with it's foreleg giving me a chance to jump upward and onto her

back. Reaching out across the dragon's right side I snatched my side-satchel free from the cloaked figure.

We arched through the air, and made off south. An hour later we made an abrupt turn west, and another hour later, we headed back south. Anything to

throw this hunter off our backs.

Time would tell if they would be the death of me. But I was missing my school horribly by now. I mindlessly fingered the empty slot within my robes left sleeve. This whole

mess started with me suddenly finding myself with two wands. Now I had none. And a wizard without a wand was more than defenseless, they were vulnerable.

"I'm a good as dead." I realized.

As soon as we land, I'm going to see about writing a letter to the only person I trust there and see if they can help me unravel this mystery.


End file.
